


something's gotta give

by purplehedgehogskies



Series: in your orbit [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: A little angst with a happy ending, Adam (Voltron) Dies, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Dog trainer Keith (Voltron), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit conversations about sex but no sexual content, First Kiss, Gay Keith (Voltron), Getting Together, Grief/Mourning, If You Squint - Freeform, It's Adam - I'm sorry, Keith & Shiro (Voltron) are Adoptive Siblings, Keith (Voltron) Has Abandonment Issues, Keith (Voltron) Needs a Hug, Keith (Voltron)-centric, M/M, Married Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Miscommunication, Mutual Pining, Not really a slow burn, Nurse Lance (Voltron), Past Allura/Lance (Voltron), Past Character Death, Past Keith/Rolo - Freeform, Recovery, Shiro is an engineer or somethin and Hunk is an intern at his company idk, Sickfic, Slow Burn adjacent..., Surgery, Trans Adam (Voltron), Trans Keith (Voltron), Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:55:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24454027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplehedgehogskies/pseuds/purplehedgehogskies
Summary: When Shiro's plan to care for Keith after his top surgery is hindered by a work event across the country, Keith has to make a backup plan - and Lance is there. Lance is the obvious choice - he's a nursing student, he's Keith's best friend, he's supportive and great. But Keith is in love with him, and that definitely complicates things.After his surgery, Keith swims a turbulent sea of feelings - he's thrilled about the results, he's painfully enamored with Lance and fears its unrequited, and worst of all, Adam's absence is heavy on his mind.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Series: in your orbit [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1980274
Comments: 13
Kudos: 260





	something's gotta give

**Author's Note:**

> Hi - Big Disclaimer and Explanation  
> I am not a trans man or transmasc really, but I'm nonbinary and I identify really strongly with transmasculine folks. This fic happened because I was doing top surgery research and processing my feelings about it - I have not had it or spoken to anyone who has, so all of this is just research based.  
> Adam's death (about 6 months before this fic takes place) was a choice I made for related reasons. A friend of mine died in an accident too, about 6 months ago, and this fic is part of that greif. It is about that grief. I needed to write a character who felt like I did, and Keith was there.  
> So yeah. Take my sentimental nonsense and be nice about it.

* * *

The thing about playing video games with Lance was that Keith never got as far as he wanted to, because Lance would throw him off some way or another. He’d be minding his own business harvesting his plants or something equally benign and Lance would shout—in dismay, in victory, in shock—and draw Keith’s eye away from his own screen. Lance had a way of dragging Keith into things, usually to taunt Lance because he was losing or to hype him up when he was winning.

When their other friends were there, they would roll their eyes at the two of them for all the bragging and teasing and wrestling on the living room floor.

When it was just Lance and Keith, it was different. Lance’s class schedule and early morning clinicals left his afternoons free twice a week, often lining up with the extra time Keith had in his schedule lately—they’d fallen into a routine of hanging out and playing whatever for a while, coexisting in each other’s space until they eventually switched over to a movie or cartoons. Lance was still just as distracting, but instead of riling Keith up like it did under the gaze of their nosy friends, Keith went somewhere else. It was more of a gravitational pull towards Planet Lance, where Keith settled into orbit and just took in the spectacle. 

Today he was drawn in by the gleeful whoop Lance let out when he won an important battle in his current playthrough of Pokémon Diamond, and Keith looked up from his mining to watch Lance’s face scrunch up as he focused and his gentle smile when he spoke lovingly to his Pokémon and called them by name. There was a perfectly good armchair behind Lance and a perfectly good couch cushion next to Keith, but Lance sprawled out on the floor on his stomach, his legs bent and kicking idly at the air—sometimes he would lie on his back, but that was more precarious, as he almost always dropped his DS on his face.

The sound of Shiro’s keys in the lock brought Keith back to Earth, reminding him of his surroundings—without his noticing, five o’clock had come and gone, the sun had dipped and the light through the window had dimmed, and his computer’s screensaver had begun a slideshow of photos. An old Christmas card photo faded into the shot of Keith, Shiro, and Adam at Pride last year, so Keith hit the spacebar to replace it with his lock screen. He tilted his head against the back of the couch to meet Shiro’s eyes as he came into the apartment, already reaching across his body to untether his prosthetic.

“Long day?” asked Keith. Shiro grunted and dropped the arm onto the couch next to Keith as he passed by, disappearing into his room.

Lance set his game aside and rose to his knees, waddling over and picking up Shiro’s arm. He initiated some sort of handshake with it, and Keith was equal parts embarrassed for him and falling more in love with him.

When Shiro reemerged, he wore slippers instead of his work shoes and loose lounging clothes instead of his bright polo and khakis. He ambled into the kitchen, peeling away the rubbery liner that cushioned his residual limb and putting it on the counter—Keith rolled his eyes—before he scratched at the same spot that always seemed to bother him. Shiro rummaged around in the pantry and withdrew the bag of crunchy Cheetos he’d started the day before, carrying it over to the living room where he sat in his big ugly armchair and rested the bag on his lap.

“Spill the tea,” said Lance.

Shiro looked to Lance, and then to his arm in Lance’s hands, and shook his head in mock disapproval.

“There’s no tea. Just…same old same old with some fun twists to keep me tearing my hair out,” said Shiro. “I’m going to go prematurely gray.”

“Silver fox?” Lance suggested.

“Adam would’ve gone absolutely out of his mind. You know he had a thing for all those stern older men on TV,” Shiro said, smiling off into nothing for a moment, patting the arm of the chair. Keith remembered when Shiro and Adam would squeeze into that stupid chair together, curled up together. Shiro would fall asleep on Adam’s chest. Keith thought that Shiro must miss that.

“What happened?” asked Keith.

Shiro’s soft, sad look melted back into the scowl he’d worn when he came in.

“They’re rescheduling the expo. Pushing it up because of some investor who planned something else that weekend? I don’t know. Point is, it’s right after your surgery now,” Shiro said, carding his fingers through his hair as though to emphasize his distress at the news.

Keith felt nerves bubbling up and tried to will himself calm. “What does that mean? You can’t stay home with me?”

“No,” said Shiro. “I’m just going to have to make sure all the guys are trained right for the expo so they can do it without me. I have some people I can trust to keep things afloat. I’ll do everything I can to be here when you need me. Worst case scenario, I’m here the first couple of days after for anything you need, and just a phone call away for the rest of your recovery.”

“Hey,” said Lance, nudging Keith’s leg. Sensing the anxiety ramping up within him and responding to it. “Even if Shiro has to go to the stupid expo thing, you always got me.”

“What?”

“It’s a weekend. I would probably come to bother you anyway,” said Lance. “Might as well be a helpful sort of nuisance.”

Simultaneously, Keith was comforted and made uneasy by the idea of Lance being with him after top surgery. Shiro was his brother; Shiro had already seen him laid up in illness and injury, had already been in the embarrassing position of taking care of him when he couldn’t take care of himself. Keith had looked into what his recovery would be like—he couldn’t shower for like a week and would barely be able to move his arms from his sides, which meant that a lot of things would be difficult.

Shit, what if he needed help wiping his ass? What if he needed to ask _Lance_ to help him wipe his ass? Even if he managed to do that by himself just fine, what about everything else? Did he really want to be that vulnerable with Lance?

“No,” Keith said.

“What do you mean?” asked Lance, gazing up at Keith from where he knelt on the floor, his eyes big and soft. He looked hurt, which stung—Keith hadn’t meant to hurt him. “You don’t want me to help you?”

“I think he means—” Shiro began.

“No, Shiro,” said Lance, a little sharply. “Let the man speak for himself.”

Keith’s eyes darted between them, frustrated that Lance hadn’t let Shiro clarify, because Shiro would get it and he would say it right, and he would say it in a way that didn’t give everything away. Keith had never been able to say things right the first time, sometimes not even the second time, but Shiro was a good translator.

“I. Uh.”

“Eloquently said,” Lance griped. He was deflecting all that hurt and poking at Keith’s buttons now. It was a frustrating thing about Lance, but Keith loved him, so he thought this was better than the other way Lance responded to feelings, which was to soak them all up and hold them inside and never tell anyone about it.

“Fine,” said Shiro, rising from the chair and picking up his arm. “Y’all need to _talk_ anyway.”

“Shiro!” Keith protested to Shiro’s back as he headed back into his bedroom. Lance rose to his feet too, and Keith feared that he was leaving until he plopped down on the couch next to Keith, right where Shiro’s prosthetic had been. “Shiro, what the hell?”

“Why don’t you want my help?” Lance asked.

This had gone downhill so fast.

“It’s not that you’re you,” said Keith. He rubbed his face and avoided Lance’s eyes—he couldn’t look at Lance’s big, beautiful, sad eyes right now and not spill his entire heart out. “Not entirely. Fuck. I mean, Shiro’s my brother. He’s seen me at my worst like that. It wouldn’t be…weird for him. Or embarrassing for me.”

“You’re embarrassed, then?”

“Yeah,” said Keith. “And I don’t want you to have to take care of me. It’s not your job.”

“Dude.” Lance laughed. “I’m in _nursing_ school. It is _literally_ my job.”

“Right, but…”

“But what? Trust me, there’s nothing post-surgery Keith could throw at me that I can’t handle.”

Except maybe a love confession.

Keith ruffled his hair and glanced up at Lance, who was looking so earnestly at Keith that it was like he was looking through him; into him. It was simultaneously thrilling and terrifying to let Lance look at him like this.

In another world, Lance might’ve been his first choice.

Keith immediately felt guilty for thinking it.

In another world, _Adam_ would be his first choice. He had always planned to have Adam here for this, from the very moment Adam sat him down to talk about his transition, stepping in where Shiro was unsure. Adam had been through top surgery himself and had taken care of a friend after surgery, Adam knew what Keith’s dysphoria was like from personal experience, Adam had gone to the consultation with him.

Adam would’ve been like a brother to Keith even if he hadn’t married Shiro.

But Adam was gone.

“Keith?” Lance was reaching out to him, his hand hovering at Keith’s shoulder. Keith leaned into the touch, let Lance scoot closer and tuck Keith into his side.

“I miss Adam.”

“I know,” said Lance, turning his head into Keith’s hair. It was a tenderness that was so familiar, so commonplace now. It wasn’t that they had never hugged before, but since Adam died it became so much more important to just hold each other—Keith hadn’t had to ask for Lance to hold him, he just _did_. “I know that you planned for—you wanted him here for this. For you.”

“Is that selfish of me?” Keith asked, wiping at the tears that had rolled down his cheeks, the salt of them lingering at the corner of his mouth. “Yeah, I wanted him to be here for my top surgery, but what about…what about…”

“Shhh,” said Lance. “It’s not selfish because it’s specific.”

Keith shifted so he could look Lance in the face, curious as to what he meant by that.

“You wanted him here for more than just your surgery. You wanted him to live his life, to do everything he planned to do,” said Lance. “It’s just that this already really hard thing is harder now, because you have to do it without him. And this really exciting thing is sadder, because he’s not here to share it with you.”

“How are you so _dumb_ , but so _wise_?” asked Keith.

Lance laughed and tucked his face back into Keith’s hair.

“I’m well rounded,” he said.

Keith let himself settle into the warmth of Lance’s body. He wondered what he was thinking, being afraid of showing Lance vulnerability when _this_ was their normal. When Lance had been there with him through plenty of rough days; had been with him for some of the worst of them, actually. Lance was loud and dumb and annoyingly flirty, his affections scattered all over the place, his behavior wacky and sometimes really confusing, but somehow, to Keith he felt so sure and steady. It was so easy to lean into Lance, now that he’d made a habit of it. What he had with Lance was good.

“So,” said Lance.

“Hmm?”

“Do you wanna watch _Steven Universe_?”

Keith let him put on _Steven Universe_ and let Lance cry on him, and he thought several times over that what he had with Lance was so good, so good that he didn’t need anything more. He could love Lance like this and it was good.

They watched a whole season, ordered pizza, and when Shiro came back out he put on some old sci-fi movie that Keith tuned out. Instead he laid on the couch with his feet across Lance’s lap, scrolling on his phone—occasionally, Lance would nudge him and hand over his phone, giggling at whatever meme he was showing Keith, and occasionally Keith would have something to show him.

Lance left after Shiro’s movie—apparently, he’d actually been paying attention to it—with an old Tupperware container full of the leftover garlic knots and a single piece of pepperoni pizza. He shoved his feet haphazardly in his shoes so that Keith was afraid he’d trip over them on his way down to his car, checked his pockets and then his messenger bag for his keys, and almost left his baseball cap on the sideboard again.

“I love you,” he said to Keith as he stepped into the hallway. “I’ll see you Saturday?”

“Mhm. Love you too.”

Keith closed the door and leaned against it a minute, listening to Lance’s footsteps down the hall. He heard a stumble—Lance tripping over his shoes as predicted—and then the sound receded enough that he could groan loudly against the door and kick at it with a socked foot.

Ouch.

“You know that you’re incredibly stupid, right?” said Shiro from his chair.

“I’m well aware,” Keith grumbled.

“’kay. Just makin’ sure.”

“What? You clearly want to say more,” said Keith, trudging over to the couch. “Say your piece.”

“Fine,” said Shiro. “Have you thought about how much time you spend with just Lance? Like not just when you hang out here.”

“He’s my friend,” said Keith.

“You took him to that charity ball thing for work. As your date.”

“As my plus-one.”

“Keith,” said Shiro. “You’re dating.”

“No, we’re not,” Keith sputtered, his face warming. “I’m just. He’s just. We’re just. Ugh. Shiro, I’d _know_ if we were dating.”

If they were dating, there’d be a lot more kissing. Keith would _always_ be kissing Lance if he could.

“I think you’re dating.”

“It’s not up to you, is it?” Keith sunk deeper into the couch cushions. “Lance has a new crush every two days.”

“Yeah, but usually it’s the barista who smiled at him or it’s like, someone fictional. When we watched _Spy Kids_ last week, he said he was in love with Antonio Banderas,” Shiro said. Keith grimaced and picked up a throw pillow, pressing his face into it. “Point is, Lance hasn’t shown real interest in real people in a long time. Other than _you_.”

“Shiro, stop it.”

“I’m just saying—”

“Stop it!” Keith half-shouted, throwing the pillow down. Then, breathing hard, he stared at the pillow for a moment as the frustration seeped out of him and just left disappointment. Disappointment in himself for lashing out at Shiro, who didn’t deserve it, and disappointment that Shiro was wrong, that he wasn’t onto anything, that he and Lance were just closer than ever and it was good, it was fantastic, but that didn’t change that Keith wished it were more.

Softly, Keith said, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

He didn’t want to look at Shiro anymore, didn’t want to look over and see that Shiro was sorry too, for pushing him or whatever. So, he got up, said “Goodnight”, and slipped off into his room to bury his face in his loved-up stuffed hippo and _not_ cry.

He succeeded until he got a text from Lance that he’d gotten home safe, and the gesture was enough to make his eyes water again.

****

The next week, Shiro came home and told Keith he wouldn’t be able to skip the expo.

Lance was there, with a textbook and a messy page of notes in front of him instead of his DS. Lance looked at him expectantly, but didn’t say anything. Keith knew that his offer still stood.

Lance stayed late that night, marathoning _Star Wars_ with Keith. The prequels. They mouthed the words thrown between Anakin and Obi-wan during that final battle, and when the limbs had been lightsabered off and Anakin was wailing on the ground, Keith asked.

He expected a little bit of teasing for his timing. Yes, he saw that Anakin pushed away the people who loved him and wanted to help him. But really, mostly, he made the decision in that moment because quoting the scene together reminded him that he and Lance spent most of their time on the same page. In sync.

Lance didn’t mess with him at all. He just said, “Yeah. We can watch the original trilogy and I’ll feed you popcorn like you’re a sickly Victorian child.”

“It’s top surgery, not fuckin’ consumption.”

“I’ll make sure to bring leeches,” said Lance. “God, I can’t say that with a straight face. I feel like my nursing cred flies out the window.”

“Maybe Padme just needed leeches.”

“Shut up.”

****

“What’s your opinion on Wednesdays?” Lance asked. “Lucky, unlucky? A good day for a big milestone?”

Laura laughed, gesturing warmly to the chair beside her—Lance took it, perched on the edge. His leg jiggled up and down and he tried to will it to stop, to no avail. On Laura’s other side, Paola looked up from the ladies’ magazine that Lance had brought her (it was old, but Paola liked reading the old ones). He would miss the patients in the chemotherapy wing when he moved on to another section of the hospital; he hadn’t spent very many shifts with them, but he’d grown fond of caring for them, talking with them, doing what he could to help them through each session. 

“Why do you ask?” Laura inquired, leaning on one elbow and resting her face on one frail yet beautifully manicured hand. She was thirty-eight, Lance remembered idly, but she chose fun nail polish colors like turquoise and bubblegum pink, and the headscarves she wore over her thinning hair were always brightly patterned and whimsical. She came to every chemo session looking bomb.

“Well, uh,” said Lance.

“I have two hours, baby,” said Laura. Lance knew it was a little less, now, since he’d gone off to do something else for his supervising nurse right after starting Laura’s treatment up, but he didn’t bother correcting her. “Paola, how long you got?”

“Thirty minutes,” said Paola. “Talk fast. I’m doing a quiz to find out what kind of cocktail I am.”

“You can keep the magazine, Paola,” said Lance.

“Talk,” Laura prompted. “What’s got you all screwed up today?”

“My guy’s got his surgery today. Like as we speak,” Lance said, twiddling his thumbs. “Can’t help but be worried as hell about him.”

“Why didn’t you take off today?” Paola demanded, closing the magazine and bringing it down to her lap in a flurry of noisy, glossy paper.

Lance made a noncommittal gesture. “Didn’t want to make up the hours later.”

“It’s because they’re not official,” said Laura sagely. “He doesn’t want to act like a boyfriend when he isn’t one, yet.”

“Stop coming for my life, Laura,” said Lance.

The restlessness became more insistent, so much so that he didn’t even glance around to see if his supervisor was watching this time when he pulled out his phone. He could’ve stayed on the lock screen and checked for notifications there, as the pictures of the sharks at the aquarium were safe and less incriminating, but Lance always typed in his passcode on instinct. His home screen wallpaper stared up at him—Keith making a frowny face at the camera, his hair pulled up in a baby ponytail at the top of his head. He refreshed all of the apps that Shiro might use to contact him, and there was nothing.

“No news is good news,” said Paola.

“Sure,” said Lance.

“Let me see him,” said Laura. Lance tilted his phone in her direction. It wasn’t the prettiest picture of Keith, but if he walked around with any of the cute ones as his wallpaper—snapchat screenshots, sneaky candids, selfies of them together—it would feel too serious and he’d let himself get even more invested than he already was. He knew it was stupid, to put all that meaning into his home screen, but it felt important. 

For Laura’s sake, though, he opened the album of cute pictures—Keith had found it already, actually, and Lance hadn’t missed the pink in his cheeks when he asked about it.

Lance had told him straight up that it was because pictures of Keith made him happy. Keith hadn’t said anything, and Lance wasn’t sure what to make of that. At this point, Lance wasn’t sure if Keith was avoiding talking about it on purpose, or if he was dumb enough that not even _one of the gayest things Lance had ever done_ was enough to clue him in.

It was dizzying, the back and forth, will-they or won’t-they, does-he or doesn’t he.

“You have it so bad,” said Laura, scrolling through Lance’s pictures. 

“Thank you, I know,” said Lance.

Eventually Lance could no longer just sit at Laura’s side—he had work to do, after all. Getting Paola out and another patient in, bringing patients and his supervisor things they asked for. He kept swinging by Laura, not only because she was his favorite but also because he was specifically assigned to her, and she kept asking for news.

Eventually Keith was out of surgery, and Lance called Shiro as soon as he could step away.

Shiro answered with a nonchalant, “What’s up?”

“How is he?” Lance asked.

“Out cold.”

“Well yeah, but—”

“He’s in recovery, but I can’t see him yet. Will be a while, still, before he’s fully cooked.”

“Shiro,” said Lance, impatience leaking into his voice. He didn’t call for Dad Jokes. “He’s not a baked potato.”

“Fine. They said something like half-hour to an hour? They’ll wait until he’s more alert to bring him to a regular room.”

“But as far as you know, everything went okay?”

“Yes, Lance,” said Shiro. Unlike Lance, he sounded like the most patient man in the world. Or at least the most patient Lance had ever met.

“Okay.”

“Get back to work, Lance.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll be off soon.”

“Guess I’ll see you then. I’ll text you what room to go to.”

“Thanks,” said Lance.

“Yeah,” said Shiro.

Lance looked at his feet, feeling the awkward silence in his bones.

“Okay, see you,” Lance finally said, a jumbled, rushed set of syllables. He hung up and shoved his phone into his pocket, a secret pocket in the front of the shirt he was wearing under his scrub top. Normally he wouldn’t have the phone with him at all, not during a clinicals shift, but today he made an exception. He’d even cleared it with the supervisor on the condition that he wouldn’t use it for anything prohibited or use it excessively.

Sure, he’d embellished the truth a little. Now Trinity from the chemo unit thought Keith was his very serious boyfriend and not just his very serious crush. They were practically dating, anyway. Lance was just…waiting for Keith to confirm or deny it.

He really had to clear all this up soon, before he combusted.

Lance was present and functional for the rest of his shift, but other than Laura’s teasing, he didn’t remember much of what had happened by the time it was over. If you quizzed him on his exact actions, he’d probably get an okay grade because he was good at guessing.

Lance had taken off his scrub top halfway through the door of the locker room, but upon arriving at the locker he shared with another student he paused and leaned his forehead against it. He closed his eyes for longer than he thought he would. His phone buzzed and Lance lifted it to his face to find that ten minutes had already passed since the official end time of his shift, and there was a text from Hunk waiting for him in his inbox.

 **Hunk’a Burnin Love:** Hey I heard Keith was out of surgery. So happy for him

Lance took a moment to register what he was reading, and then another moment to shake off how tired he was before replying.

 **Lancey Lance:** Yeah

 **Lancey Lance:** Going down to his room in a min

While Hunk was typing, Lance shucked off his scrub pants and balled them up, trading them out for a pair of thin striped joggers that were kind of short on him, but really soft and comfy against his skin. Keith had liked them, last time he wore them; Lance had shoved his legs in Keith’s lap and Keith had been so enamored with the texture of the fabric that he kept playing with it for at least an hour. 

Lance considered leaving it at that, but just to be sure he sniffed the inside of his Henley. It was a little too ripe, so he wiggled out of his shirt and put on some deodorant before changing into the t-shirt he’d tossed into his bag.

Now fully changed, Lance zipped up his backpack and slung it over one shoulder, picking his phone up from the bench beside him on his way out of the locker room.

 **Hunk’a Burnin Love:** Do you think I should come say hi

 **Lancey Lance:** I’ll ask

Lance was glad that his clinicals were in the same hospital as Keith’s surgery, because he knew his way around and found his way to Keith easily. Before ducking in, he sidled up to the desk for this wing and asked Fatima about her rescue dogs, let her talk for a few minutes, and then double checked that Keith was cleared for non-family visitors.

“I think the doctor is with him right now,” she said. “There’s some post-op briefing that needs to be done. If you want, I can show you some pictures of my babies while you wait?”

Lance agreed, cooed over the photos for a few minutes until the doctor came down the hall Fatima shooed Lance in the direction of Keith’s room.

The door was open, so Lance waltzed right into the room to find Keith laughing with a nurse that Lance had met briefly, Dan or Dave or something, a young surgical nurse on track to get a masters in nursing. He’d talked to Lance about school for a bit over a vending machine sandwich and he was charming as all get out, which had made Lance swoon a little then but just made him cranky now.

“I can come back later if I’m interrupting something,” said Lance, coming up to the foot of the bed and dropping his backpack there, just to be sure everyone knew he was staying a while. Shiro, who was sitting by the window with a book, looked up, waved, and returned his eyes to the page.

Keith was understandably a little slow in moving his attention from Dan, since he was on that good pain shit, but Lance still felt a little miffed that Nurse Handsome got any of Keith’s attention. But when Keith saw Lance, he smiled a lovely, soft little smile, and Lance didn’t really care who else was in the room.

“Hey,” he said, gripping the plastic at the end of the bed.

“Hey,” said Keith.

“Oh,” said Dave (it was definitely Dave—he’d turned and Lance could read his badge.) “This is your Lance? I know this guy.”

 _Keith’s_ Lance. Oh, Sweet Jesus in Heaven, Lance was going to _die_.

“I did some hours over here a couple months back,” Lance told Keith, filling him in. “Talked to Dave about grad school. How’s that going, man?”

“Oh, kickin’ my ass,” said Dave. “Glad to see this guy’s gonna be in such good hands when he goes home.”

“Yeah,” said Lance. “Shiro’s hands and my hands. Good hands.”

Keith rolled his eyes. “Stop saying _hands_.”

“Okay,” said Lance.

“Well,” said Dave. “I’ll be back in a bit with discharge papers. No rush, I just want to start the process so when you want to get out of here, we can get you out.”

“Mmkay,” said Keith, like he didn’t really care. “Lance, you’re like, uuuuh, a scarecrow. Just standin’ there. C’mere.”

“Okay,” said Lance, not even paying mind to Mr. Nurse Handsome anymore as he pulled a chair from its place near the wall and brought it close to Keith’s bedside. He settled down in it, close enough that he could lean his elbows on the edge of the mattress. “Hey, buddy. How are you?”

“Happy. Tired. Happy tired,” said Keith. “Hate not moving my arms. Love not having boobs.”

“Yeah?”

Keith nodded, looking down at his bandaged chest, peeking through an open hospital gown. He looked caught up in it, his brows drawn, eyes heavy with feeling, lips parted and a little shaky. Lance knew he hadn’t even seen the full result yet—that would come in a week or so, when this set of bandages could come off—but just looking down and seeing that his chest was flat seemed to fill Keith with a whole lot of something.

“Hey,” Lance said, nudging Keith’s leg. “Can you talk it out, or do you just wanna feel it?”

Lance had gotten used to asking this of Keith, in various ways. He’d asked on days when Keith’s anxiety was needling at him, days when his dysphoria was particularly bad; the past few months, it had been more and more about missing Adam.

Keith took a moment, working his jaw and blinking as though it cleared his eyes, rather than forcing some of the tears to fall. 

“I don’t know if I have words,” said Keith. “I’m happy. I’m really happy.”

“I’m so glad,” said Lance, his hand wandering up to find Keith’s where it lay on the bed. “Looks good on you.”

“What? Crying like a baby?” Keith let out a watery laugh. “I look gross.”

“No,” said Lance, squeezing his hand. “You look like you. You always look like you, obviously, but I mean. You took a big step today. You’ve come so far. This moment of whatever it is—euphoria?”

“Yeah,” Keith confirmed, his voice soft and raspy. “Euphoria.”

“Anyway, that’s what I’m saying. And it’s beautiful, man. You’re a beautiful, happy motherfucker, and that makes me happy.”

And it was all there, right there, if Keith would look at it and see it for what it was. As much as Lance thought he could keep it under wraps, he was pungent with it—with all that hope and desperation, with all that pride in what Keith was, with all that sappy, eyelash-fluttering love and with the steady, unconditional kind, too.

“Hey,” said Lance, trying and failing to suppress the emotion-soaked crack in his voice as he rushed to think of something else. “We should have a party.”

“What?” asked Keith with a laugh, disbelieving, amused. Still holding Lance’s hand.

“Hunk asked if you were up to seeing people,” said Lance. “And I thought why not make a shindig of it? He could whip something up. I could pick up some, I don’t know, some chips and guac on the way to your place and we could invite the gang—”

“Lance,” said Shiro. “Keith’s probably really tired.”

“Oh, no, I know,” he said. This was a mess. He was a mess, tumbling over himself to cover up what he’d already spilled. “Obviously only if Keith is up for it. Obviously!”

“Maybe tomorrow,” said Keith. “Is that okay? If we do it tomorrow instead?”

Lance opened his mouth to answer and then closed it, opened it, closed it. Like a fuckin’ fish. Keith was just so—so soft, so earnest, so concerned about what _Lance_ thought when the hypothetical impulse party was for Keith, not to mention the fact that his hand was still loosely tangled with Lance’s. Lance thought back to the high school rules about hand-holding—if you just clasped hands it was bro-coded, but intertwined fingers was strictly for bae. This was like an awkward in-between and Lance had no idea what to make of it.

Shiro folded over the corner of the page he was on and set the book down and noisily set it aside, hauling himself out of his chair with a groan. He crossed the room, stopping at the door.

“I’m gonna get a candy bar.”

“Cool,” said Keith.

“And I don’t know where the nearest vending machine is. I might have to go all the way to the gift shop.”

“Oh,” said Lance. “There’s one—”

“Shh,” said Shiro.

“But—”

“Lance, do not tell me where the vending machine is.”

And he was out the door, half-closing it behind him as he went. Lance turned back to Keith and looked at him, bewildered, but Keith just looked like he was caught in somebody’s headlights.

“Hold on,” said Lance. “What’s wrong? What’s—did something go wrong, and Shiro just didn’t want to be the one who told me? Did they find something?”

“What?” Keith shook his head. “No, Lance.”

“Then what the hell is going on?”

“Uuuuuuh. He just…wanted to go for a walk.”

“That was way too pointed for it to be because Shiro, the most patient person I know, was feeling antsy. Is _he_ okay?” Even if there was nothing physically wrong with Shiro, it occurred to Lance that he might associate hospitals with his trauma—being sick in his teens, losing his arm, saying goodbye to Adam.

“No,” said Keith. “He’s fine.” 

Keith let go of Lance’s hand and made like he would lift his arm to run his hand through his hair or rub his face, but then he remembered that he couldn’t do that and stopped. He made another aborted move to cross his arms, his other default when he was really going through it.

He settled for putting his hands back on the blanket and scrunching it up with his fingers.

“Buddy,” said Lance. He felt weird keeping his hand there, just hanging out on the mattress like it had been abandoned there. He felt sad looking at it. It felt like rejection. He pulled it back into his lap and tangled it with his other hand. “Give me something to work with, here.”

“Shiro thought we were having a moment,” Keith said with a groan, clenching his eyes shut and letting his head fall against the pillow that propped him up. “Like, a private kind of moment.”

“Oh,” said Lance. “Are we? Havin’ a private kind of moment?”

“Fuckin hell.”

“What’s _wrong_?”

“I don’t want this to be it.”

Lance was not sure what that meant, but he knew what it felt like. It felt like Keith was going to deal a blow, a blow on Lance’s meticulously, delicately strung-up high hopes. He’d bring them all down clumsily, all at once, and Lance would still love him when it was done.

“I’m on a ton of drugs,” Keith was going on. “Laid up in the hospital. I mean I’m leaving soon, but I’m so tired. And I don’t want you to go. I want you to stay. Or to meet me at home or whatever.”

“Keith…”

“Fuck,” said Keith. “Fuck, I thought I was done with the crying. I hate the fucking crying.”

Lance looked up from his hands and saw the tears rolling down Keith’s face. He looked around the room and found a box of tissues on the roll-up tray that was standing a few feet from Keith’s bed, on the other side. Next to the box was Keith’s phone.

Lance got up and pushed the tray over to him, taking a wad of tissues back to his chair. He took them for himself, but when Keith looked at him through snot and tears, he couldn’t help but sit carefully on the side of the bed and wipe Keith’s face. Keith _could_ do it himself, probably, but Lance wanted to help goddammit.

“Why are _you_ crying?” Keith demanded.

“Because you’re crying.”

“Well stop it,” Keith said weakly.

Lance laughed, and it was a garbled sound thick with tears and feelings and so much fucking love for Keith he couldn’t handle it.

“Can you tell me what you don’t want to happen right now, just so I might be prepared when it happens later?” asked Lance. “I promise I won’t go anywhere. I’ll even pretend you never said anything, if that’s what you want.”

Keith was crying again, his mouth all quivery and his eyes all big and wet.

“ _What_?” asked Lance.

“I don’t _know_ , you just said you weren’t gonna leave me and I got emotional again.”

When Lance had met Keith that first week of college, he’d been so quiet and seemed so untouchable for so long—unless Lance pissed him off—that Lance never would’ve thought he’d see Keith like this. He never would have thought he’d know a Keith that told him everything, that showed Lance his favorite things, that said I love you to his friends so frequently. This tousled, tear-streaked Keith had come so far, and like Lance said before, that was beautiful. He was beautiful.

“Of course I’m not gonna leave you,” said Lance. “I love you.”

“You really do,” said Keith. “And that means so much to me. It really does, Lance.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Fuck,” said Keith. “Lance, I love you.”

“Yeah, buddy,” said Lance, gently squeezing his shoulder. He sniffled a bit and Lance handed him another tissue, resigned to let him handle it himself. Keith wiped his nose with his t-rex arm, carefully not moving his upper body too much, and then crumpled the tissue up in his hand. “I know.”

Lance waited, gave Keith all the time he wanted to say something more. He even gave him space, slipping back into his chair at the side of the bed instead of hovering right on top of Keith. Still, Keith just awkwardly blew his nose with one hand, steadied his breathing, and let whatever he had almost said fizzle out.

When he picked up his phone to play his puzzle games, the ones he said he played to stay sharp but Lance suspected it was just an addiction like any other phone game, Keith complained about having to hold his phone further away than he was used to. He wondered aloud if Shiro would let him get a Shamrock Shake on the way home. He asked Lance if it was supposed to rain later. But he didn’t bring up the moment or the thing again, which was maybe for the best.

When Shiro came back, he tossed a Twix bar at Lance’s head and Keith laughed.

“Can we go to McDonald’s on the way home?” he asked.

Shiro looked wary. “As long as you don’t get a shake.”

“Fuck you,” said Keith. “I’ll just eat my weight in French fries.”

****

Shiro did let him have a shake, but wouldn’t let him drink it until he got home and had a lactase pill first. Keith made faces at him for it, knowing that it would accomplish nothing and probably that he’d be thankful later when he didn’t feel disgusting for eating dairy on top of everything else.

Lance followed them home in his car, because Keith had asked him to. Keith tried to let that distract him from how weepy he’d been in the hospital when Shiro left the room, when Keith almost let their moment be the moment. His willpower was low. He was tired.

Luckily, it was easy enough to distract himself. He was really tired.

They ate in the living room, and Lance stole some of his fries even though he had his own, and that in itself felt Normal. They watched something Keith couldn’t remember, and Lance sat on the floor next to Keith’s feet. Keith remembered listening to the sound of Lance talking to Shiro more than whatever was happening on the screen, and he remembered stirring at the movement when Lance got up.

Keith tried to say, “Where are you going?” but it came out sloppy and barely recognizable, which made him frown at himself. Why was Lance leaving? It felt like they’d only just come home.

Then Lance was talking. Keith caught “Home” and “Tomorrow” and “Together all weekend.”

“Mhm,” Keith said. “Stay.”

And Lance had laughed, clear and lovely. Keith loved that. Lance ruffled his hair, gentle fingertips against Keith’s scalp, and Keith loved that too.

“G’night, bud,” said Lance. “Get some sleep.”

Keith said something. Something messy again.

“I love you, too.”

At that, Keith smiled, and his eyes closed and they felt too heavy and goopy to open again.

He didn’t remember Shiro waking him up again to bring him to bed, but he must have, because Keith woke up to harsh daylight streaming in through the banged-up blinds in his bedroom. The blinds had been brand new when they moved in, but he’d managed to fuck them up at some point much to Adam’s chagrin. Adam had hated coming into his room and seeing Keith’s blinds, bent out of shape and hanging crookedly because Keith had pulled them up wrong. He’d always meant to buy a new set.

Keith felt like hot garbage. His mouth tasted gross, his eyes felt crusty, his chest was tender and achey and numb all at once. He didn’t know how to approach getting out of bed, in part because he wasn’t entirely sure if he could move. Undoubtedly his limbs were attached, but his awareness of them was murky.

“Oh,” said Shiro from the doorway. Keith’s neck hurt when he turned his head toward his brother. “You’re awake.”

“Lea’mealone.” That wasn’t words. Keith grunted, frustrated. He clenched his hands into fists, unclenched them, clenched them again. He made sure to form his words carefully when he said, “Fuck. You.”

“And cranky. Nice.”

Yeah, he was cranky. He felt disassembled, which made him angry. He missed Adam, which made him angry. He wanted to sleep, but it was too fucking bright, which made him angry.

“Stupidfuckinblinds,” said Keith.

Shiro came up to his bedside despite Keith glaring at him, and Keith saw that he had a cup with a long twisty straw in his hand and the bag from the pharmacy dangling from the articulated fingers of his prosthetic.

“Here,” said Shiro, holding the cup low so that Keith could grab it without lifting an arm. With his now free hand, he reached into the bag and took out the medications. He’d gotten good at opening prescription bottles one handed, shaking out pills one by one into Keith’s hand.

Keith took them, sipping at the water and scowling.

“Your glasses are right here,” said Shiro, pointing to the nightstand.

“M’not squinting. I’m scowling.”

“Still,” said Shiro. “Lance said you complained about not being able to see your phone as well from far away. So I dug your glasses out.”

Keith had forgotten that he couldn’t see.

Well, he’d forgotten that he couldn’t wear contacts because he couldn’t put them in without full range of motion in his arms. He hadn’t forgotten his nearsightedness.

He put the water in his other hand and scooted his body slightly to the left, so he could get the glasses from the table. He put them on and the world was clearer, but Keith was still pissed.

He felt even crankier when Shiro made him take off his comfortable hoodie so he could tend to the obnoxious and painful drains coming out of Keith’s chest. He reminded Keith that he could do this himself when he needed to, to which Keith grunted. 

“I’ll leave you to stew,” said Shiro. He pushed Keith’s phone a little closer to him. “Text if you need anything.”

Keith did not have anything else to say to this man. He just sipped his water. After a while, he picked up his phone to play his puzzle games, hoping he’d feel less clumsy and foggy if he actually used his brain for something. There were texts from Lance, but for once Keith didn’t read them. In part because he wasn’t sure he would really process what they said.

He moved from easy matching games to a crossword to a Sudoku, and although he couldn’t fill all the boxes he felt a little sharper by the time Lance texted again. Keith let himself be drawn away from his puzzle by the notification, opening their messaging window and scrolling back to see what Lance had said before.

 **Lance:** Hey I know ur sleeping but I’m home

 **Lance:** Man I felt so bad leavin you

 **Lance:** Your so babey when your tired

 **Lance:** Your’re

 **Lance:** You’re

 **Lance:** Okay bed now goodnight titless wonder

And then in the morning, Lance had texted him again.

 **Lance:** The sun shines, the birds chirp, and Keith sleeps like a babe.

 **Lance:** How are you?

 **Lance:** Ok so I got class all morning I’ll bug you again at noon thirty or so

 **Lance:** Oh, also you said you might wanna have the squad over today but obviously only if you feel up to it I know what’s up

 **Lance:** Ok text me

And the most recent, sent moments ago:

 **Lance:** Shiro said somethin crawld up ur ass and died

Keith smiled, feeling better having read through Lance’s rambling messages and felt his voice in each one of them.

 **Keith:** Ha. Titless wonder. 

**Keith:** When are you coming back? Miss you..

 **Lance:** !! I know I’m hilarious.

 **Lance:** At home changing and packing a bag. Can be there in 20 min if you want.

Keith groaned at how needy he sounded, telling Lance straight up that he missed him. Lance had apparently skated right by it, though, and was packing his bag to come stay with Keith for the next few days. If Lance was here, the neediness blooming in Keith would be sated easily, and hopefully he could avoid embarrassing himself through desperate ploys for Lance’s attention.

 **Keith:** See you in 20, then.

 **Lance:** On my way

Keith wiggled his way out of his blanket nest and carefully brought his legs around, standing on unsteady feet but quickly getting his bearings. He ambled across the room to the dresser, where he’d stacked all his front closure shirts and hoodies for easy access. Yesterday he’d worn his favorite red hoodie with the white stripes down the sleeves, to and from the hospital and apparently to bed as well. But he was overheating a little now and he had some short-sleeved shirts he could wear.

Keith unzipped the front of the hoodie and looked down at his chest, almost tempted to just wander around in just his bandages. Not to parade around as some kind of fashion statement –they were exceedingly plain and nowhere near his preferred color palette of black-red-gray— but because he really liked the idea of walking around shirtless. It absolutely thrilled him, really.

The bandages, though, looked a bit like a binder, and the drains were an eyesore. It wasn’t true freedom, not yet. He found himself wishing that it was healed already and he could see his chest and touch it and actually let it be. Maybe he’d parade it around then.

Keith shimmied awkwardly out of his sweatshirt and grasped the first shirt on the pile, taking a minute to recall how to get it on without pulling at his sutures and starting a bleed. It was as he was struggling to pull the first sleeve up his arm that Shiro came down the hallway and caught him.

“Getting dressed by yourself, huh?” he asked, leaning in the doorframe.

“Yeah.”

“Should change your underwear too.”

“Fuck off,” said Keith. Shiro laughed.

“What? You can’t shower, so you have to make _sure_ —”

“Stop,” said Keith, getting the first sleeve on and sighing heavily before tackling the other one. “I hate you.”

“Need any help?” asked Shiro, still half-teasing if his tone was anything to go by. But Keith knew that if he genuinely asked, Shiro would do it in a heartbeat. He knew what it was like to need help and he’d never give Keith a hard time. He made fun because it made Keith feel normal; he made fun because Keith was stubborn and gung-ho about doing things himself.

“When’s Lance coming over?” asked Shiro.

Keith tugged at the bottom of the shirt. Picked up his phone from the dresser. “Now,” he said.

“Hmm,” said Shiro.

“Yeah. Shut up.”

“Are you having that party he talked about? Now that you’re…less of an asshole?”

Keith rolled his eyes and shuffled into the hallway.

“I don’t know.” He made his way to the living room and lowered himself on the couch, and Shiro followed. He handed Keith the remote and pushed the coffee table closer; he’d already put a pillow on top for Keith to put his feet up. “Oh, you shouldn’t have.”

“Anything for my baby bro,” said Shiro. “Don’t feel pressured to say yes, you know. You’re meant to be resting. Having a bunch of people over is not resting.”

Keith shrugged. “I’ll talk to Lance about it when he gets here.”

“See, buddy, Lance is the one who suggested it,” said Shiro. “And I don’t want you to say yes just to make him happy.”

“But he made the suggestion to make me happy. It’s not about him,” said Keith. “You know Lance better than that.”

“Yeah, I know Lance does what he thinks will make people happy—”

“He’s not gonna do anything without talking to me about it.”

“What about the time he set you up with that guy, when you told him you weren’t looking for anything? The bartender?” Shiro leaned against the back of his recliner. Keith groaned at the mention of his fling with the bartender, which was really just chatting over dinner at Olive Garden and a little fooling around in the backseat of Keith’s car before he dropped the guy off at work. They’d never gone out again, and now Keith couldn’t go to that bar. Though it was probably safe now, since it had been about a year.

“He was nice enough. Good with his hands,” said Keith. “Suppose he had to be. He’s a bartender.”

“What? Oh, oh no. That’s too much information. Never say that to me again.” Shiro whirled around, covering his ears and shaking his head and making a show of trying to forget what Keith had said.

Lance chose this as the perfect time to tap his knuckles against the door and subsequently let himself in.

“Hey, dudes…what am I walking in on?” Lance asked, closing the door slowly behind him as he took in the sight of Shiro’s ridiculous display.

“I hinted, subtly, that I have had something resembling sex,” said Keith.

“Oh, yeah, we been knew. With your prom date and…hold on, let me get my Keith trivia right,” Lance said, striding into the room and setting his bag down on the floor before he climbed onto the other side of the couch, sitting on one of his feet. “Paul was your prom date and he was president of the GSA. Freshman year you were semi-serious with Mr. Polo-Shirt and you rekindled that for a little bit sophomore year before you withdrew…he went by his dumb last name. _Stirling_.” Lance made a face at this. “And then last year, Rolo.”

“You forgot the state fair guy.”

“Yeah,” said Lance. “You didn’t know his name, though. You just made out with him behind the funnel cake truck.”

“Again,” said Shiro. “I did not need to know any of this. I’m disturbed that _you_ know all of this.”

“Truth or dare, man,” said Lance.

That, and Lance listened, and Lance _remembered_.

Keith felt himself smiling, thinking all things soft and sentimental in Lance’s direction. Lance smiled back at him, conspiratorially, and settled himself further into the couch. He walked his hand across the cushions and stole the remote from Keith’s lap, turning on Animal Planet for a bit of dull background noise.

“The two of you…” said Shiro with a sigh and a shake of his head. Keith wasn’t sure if he was mystified by the way he and Lance were, or if he was seeing something of himself in them. He and Adam had met in college and danced around each other, too.

“ _Holy shit_ that gazelle lookin thing is going to get eaten and I do not want to watch that,” said Lance, giving the remote back and getting up, rounding the sofa and ruffling Keith’s hair as he passed by, and Keith watched him carry his cooler bag—he hadn’t noticed the cooler bag before—into the kitchen. Keith watched him instead of watching the gazelle-lookin-thing get eaten.

“Mama made us sandwiches,” said Lance, dumping the bag on the counter and starting to unload it, starting with the long foil wrapped sandwiches –there were definitely more than three—and some containers, a foil pan that looked like it was meant to be reheated in the oven, a bottle of soda. “Hunk sent lasagna. He made it with that vegan cheese he got, so, you know. No lactose.”

“You stopped by your parents’ house?” asked Shiro. “Isn’t that out of your way?”

“Nah,” said Lance. “Went there after class to pick up some laundry I did last weekend when I was out of quarters, and then she sent me home with sandwiches and I went back to my place to change.”

Lance stacked up the goodies in the fridge while Shiro took the sandwiches, unwrapping them, cutting them in half, slapping them on paper plates before reheating them quick in the microwave. Lance saw this, gasped as though he was scandalized, and resumed his rearranging of the fridge.

“Sun Chips,” said Keith.

“Pantry?” asked Lance.

“Yes,” said Shiro. “Get me Cheetos.”

Lance tossed the Cheetos, and Shiro caught them. He put the bag on his plate and carried it all into the living room, hovering by the chair and considering.

“Do you guys need—”

“No,” said Keith. “We’re good.”

Somewhere behind Shiro, Lance was still fussing around in the kitchen. Keith craned his neck to try to see what he was doing and Shiro huffed out a laugh, rolling his eyes before taking his food down the hallway to his room, where he’d eat at his desk and answer emails and hopefully finish packing before he had to head out for his 8 PM flight to Sacramento. He’d tried to get something early on Friday instead, so Lance wouldn’t have to stay tonight, but Keith had convinced him he wouldn’t want to go to work straight from the tarmac.

“What did you do to my sandwich?” Keith asked as Lance toted the sandwiches and the bag of chips over to the couch, setting his own plate down on the end table before putting Keith’s on his lap.

“Put sliced tomato on it.”

“Oh,” said Keith. Lance’s mother wouldn’t have put tomatoes on, knowing that Lance didn’t like them and that the sandwiches would be reheated to melt the cheese, but she’d had the thought to send some pre-sliced tomato with him. “Mama thinks of everything.”

“Nah, she can’t keep track of who likes what,” said Lance. “I asked for them special, because you’re a freak who likes slimy tomatoes on his sandwich.”

Keith loved him, loved him, loved him.

“Hey,” said Keith.

“Hey,” Lance said, pulling on either side of the Sun Chip bag to open them, and then inhaling the scent of the cheese flavoring once he’d gotten the bag open. “What?”

“Thank you.”

Lance beamed. “You’re absolutely welcome.”

“For all of it.”

“Sentiment still applies.” He scooted over and tipped the bag of chips, dumping a serving or two onto Keith’s plate.

“Do you…still want to have people over?” asked Keith.

“It’s your house,” said Lance with a laugh. “We don’t have to. I just. I knew that you get stir crazy, and I knew that people wanted to see you—”

“The extraordinary titless wonder,” Keith interjected.

“Yes, exactly. I know it’s not my best idea, especially so soon. I just thought…”

“I’m really tired,” said Keith. He took a bite of his sandwich. Shiro’s choice to nuke it had made the bread just a tad too squishy, but the sandwich was still good.

“Okay, we won’t—”

“No, no, I just might fall asleep. And I’m crabby,” Keith said around his sandwich. He set it down and gestured with his hand so Lance would wait for him to chew and swallow. “And I feel like once I’ve started dozing I get weird.”

“Yeah,” said Lance. “I was here last night. I know.”

“How’d you phrase it? I was ‘so baby’. Like a stupid, clingy baby.”

“Mm. It was cute,” said Lance. Keith frowned. “Stop pouting. You just wanted me to stay because you love me, which you said _a lot_ yesterday—”

“Lance!”

Lance laughed.

“Okay,” he said. “Hunk and Pidge and Allura. The original squad.”

“Pidge will poke me,” said Keith. “And doesn’t Hunk have to go to the expo?”

“Fuck, you’re right. That’s why he sent the lasagna.” Lance groaned. He ate some of his sandwich, made a thinking face, and seemed to get an idea halfway through chewing a second bite. “Oh,” he said. “I know. Hunk said he might go to the airport with Shiro so they can split the stupid airport parking, so he could come early. Just to say hi. And Pidgeon…has night class. Damn. Forgot it was Thursday. Allura?”

“Or we can wait,” said Keith. 

“Or we can wait,” Lance agreed. He sobered up quickly, poking at his bread. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” said Keith. “Thank you for trying, but I guess it’s not the right time.”

“Yeah.” Lance shrugged. “I didn’t put a lot of thought into it, really. Was kind of a dumb idea.”

“No.”

“I’m trying not to make this about me and what I would want, or what I think I would want, and—”

“Lance,” said Keith. “I don’t need anyone else. You’re enough.”

“Yeah?”

Keith looked over again, shocked that he’d even stopped looking at Lance for one second. All the drugs and the vulnerability and the alone time was getting to Keith—he felt sappy and stupidly in love and yeah, he just wanted to look at Lance for a bit. Maybe go back to sleep, wake up and see Lance.

“Yeah,” said Keith. “You’re enough.”

****

Lance felt like he was going a little nuts, the cabin fever setting in early. Maybe it was because Shiro had left—only twenty minutes ago, yes, but still Lance was alone with a sleepy, clingy, adorable Keith who needed his help but also needed to tell him something. He’d thought that having people over would be good for Keith, but he’d selfishly wanted it for himself – a buffer. Something to prevent Keith from spilling, from saying something like _“I know how you feel and I’m sorry.”_

He still hoped. Keith looked at him a certain way, sometimes, and he said things like “Stay” and “I love you” and “You’re enough,” It was just that sometimes, hoping was hard.

Lance leaned against the counter, his back to Keith as he dozed off to _Cloud Atlas_ , watching the lasagna heat through for an amount of time that he’d forgotten to ask.

He texted Hunk, getting an answer quickly enough. Cool. He set the timer.

But Hunk was going to have to go through security, soon, and then find his gate. Lance was at nail-biting, foot-tapping, obsessively-lasagna-checking levels of nervousness right now.

 **Lancey Lance:** Hey allura I’m uuuuuh dying

 **Lancey Lance:** Is it weird to text my ex and current crush’s boss (you, lovely, professional, amazing) about my current crush (Keith, sleeping real cute in the next room, killing me softly)

 **Lancey Lance:** I don’t care if it’s weird

 **Princess:** It’s not weird. We’re friends. And to address the matter at hand: you know what I have to say about this. Talk to him.

 **Lancey Lance:** Never thought I’d feel weird being alone with Keith. Not since we got stoned together in his dorm

 **Princess:** That wasn’t while I was on duty, was it?

 **Lancey Lance:** Not that I recall

 **Princess:** Heavens above.

 **Princess:** What is it that you’re afraid of? A no that means rejection, or a yes that changes what you have irrevocably?

 **Lancey Lance:** ur using big words on me :/

 **Princess:** This will only feel worse the longer it goes on.

Lance sighed, and behind him Keith muttered something in his half-sleep. Fuck it all.

 **Lancey Lance:** yeah guess ur right

 **Lancey Lance:** but also I gotta be here all weekend!!

 **Lancey Lance:** I’m making dinner would that be a good time to talk to him

 **Princess:** I’m sure it is as good a time as any, Lance.

 **Lancey Lance:** I love him

 **Princess:** I know.

 **Princess:** Do you want some pictures of the students I saw today?

 **Lancey Lance:** yes bring on the puppies

Lance scrolled delightedly through the dog pictures that Allura sent, embarrassing sounds of awe and affection slipping out of him as he went.

“Lance?”

Lance turned to see that Keith had stirred, sitting up a little straighter and grimacing. Lance hurried over, clutching his phone tightly in his hand.

“What? Something hurt?”

“Ugh. A little.”

“You took some meds right before Shiro left…”

“I know. I just moved and my back didn’t like it,” said Keith, frowning down at his hands, relaxed in his lap. He had to tilt his head forward to reach his glasses, which had been jostled out of place while he slept. “You woke me up.”

“I’m sorry,” said Lance. He sat down on the coffee table, next to Keith’s propped-up feet. “I was looking at puppies.”

“Hmm. I miss puppies,” said Keith. “I should get one.”

“Not in the immediate future, I hope,” said Lance. He brought up the pictures Allura had sent him and handed Keith his phone. “Have a look. Are any of these usually your kids?”

Keith smiled softly, scrolling on Lance’s phone. He stopped on the dalmatian. “This one. Her name’s Dixie. I also trained this couple’s other dog. He’s a good boy. Really gentle. _Speak_ was the hardest to teach him.”

“I love when you talk about work,” said Lance.

“You love when I talk about _dogs_.”

“Yeah,” Lance agreed.

Keith finished scrolling through the pictures and the window closed, giving way to Lance’s messages with Allura. Lance’s heartbeat spiked as he tried to be really cool about taking his phone back, before Keith read anything. They weren’t good at privacy, not anymore. Not since all the times they got high, the truth or dare, the mutual emotional breakdowns, and the skinny dipping in Lance’s parents’ pool.

“Hey,” said Lance. “How awake are you? Hunk’s lasagna’s in the oven.”

Keith shrugged. “I’m tired. If I fall asleep again…” 

“It can be reheated again.”

“Good,” said Keith, yawning.

“So, did you…?” Lance felt like his skin was buzzing. If he looked up, he’d still see those hopes, sparkling from where he’d hung them so high.

“See your texts?” Keith clarified. Lance nodded. “A little. But I’m the him, right? I know you love me.”

Keith smiled, a little impishly, but soft around the edges, and Lance could only nod and smile back.

“Why’d you tell Allura?”

“What?”

“Y’know. Everybody knowsit.” Keith slurred, and he was blinking slowly like he was going to doze off again, and it was the cutest thing Lance had seen since—well, since last night when Keith had sleepily begged him to stay. “If they know then why’d you…you love me special or somethin?”

Lance sighed. As much as it was driving him up the wall, he now felt like it wasn’t the time nor place. Maybe it was because he wasn’t even sure Keith would remember what he said, if he said it. His eyes were closed now, eyelashes fluttering just a little as he half-tried to open them again.

Right now was Keith’s moment. Keith’s recovery, Keith’s milestone. Keith’s naptime, apparently.

Lance could wait.

****

Keith woke up feeling ridiculously crabby again. The world was stupid and blurry and it was too warm and he was somewhere between nauseous and starving. He groaned to himself and looked around, struggling to pull off the blanket that had been draped over him. On the TV something animated was on pause, and he could see the vague shape of his glasses sitting neatly on the side table at the other end of the couch, next to one of Lance’s obnoxiously large nursing textbooks. Evidence of Lance’s presence, but no Lance in sight. 

This had the audacity to make him sad. Obviously, Lance was somewhere, but the needy bastard in him had Keith pouting that Lance wasn’t right there, right next to him. Stupid, clingy, love feelings. Stupid Lance.

Down the hallway, the toilet flushed. The faucet turned on, and then off. Keith turned, his neck protesting, as Lance emerged from the hall, wiping his damp hands on his sweatshirt. Keith’s sweatshirt- the black pullover with a hole in the sleeve.

“Hey, you’re up!” said Lance, rounding the couch and picking up Keith’s glasses on the way. He handed them over and settled on the couch, smiling as Keith fumbled to put them back on. “Do you need anything?”

“Is that mine?” asked Keith. He knew it was his. He could see the little hole near the shoulder, and through it the sleeve of Lance’s shirt.

Lance looked down at himself, his fingers curling around the sleeves of the hoodie. “Yeah,” he said, softly. “I was chilly. I forgot to pack one, and I knew you didn’t need…are you cold? I could get your red one. Is this okay? I could just. Um.”

“It’s fine,” said Keith. “I’m kind of hungry.”

Lance was already halfway to his feet. “I’ll get—”

“Just sit with me a minute.”

“Oh,” said Lance. “Okay. I’ll get it later, then.”

“Yeah,” said Keith. “What time is it?”

“Almost ten, I think.” He slid his hand into the kangaroo pocket, withdrawing his phone. “Yeah. Almost ten.”

“So, I slept for a while,” said Keith. Lance nodded, his eyes wandering down Keith’s torso. In any other circumstance Keith might’ve been flattered, especially when Lance gently tugged aside his shirt. Today, Keith knew Lance was checking the stupid drain bulb and tube sticking out the side of his chest. “Lance.”

“Sorry, just checking,” he said, pulling back. “I didn’t want to do it while you were asleep.”

“How’s it look?”

“Not bad. We can probably wait until you go to bed,” said Lance. He drew back, away from Keith, and Keith longed for him to come back. “I’m getting all nurse-y on you. I don’t know when to stop, I’m sorry.”

“I guess that’s better than being bad at your job,” said Keith. He had pulled the blanket down off his upper body, but his legs were still too hot so he kicked it off. “I’d probably forget if I was by myself. So. Thank you.”

“Yeah,” said Lance. “Of course. Do you want that lasagna now?”

Keith’s stomach vocalized its response before he could. Lance laughed and got up, and Keith watched. He felt like he was going back to pouting, so he tried to school his expression. Lance hummed as he maneuvered around the kitchen, opening and closing the fridge, getting a bowl from the right cabinet on the first try, pressing microwave buttons. He knew his way around. Keith tried to remember the first few times Lance had been here, back when he had to ask where the bowls were and didn’t feel comfortable rooting around in someone else’s fridge.

It took him a while, but the memory was there. After Keith had decided not to go back to school halfway through sophomore year and had moved back in with Shiro, Lance had to start venturing further than two steps outside his own dorm room to bother Keith. And he had, with determination, started coming to Keith’s place with cupcakes that Hunk made in his culinary elective and gossip about what was going on in the dorms.

The very first time, Adam had answered the door and said Keith’s boyfriend was there, which had flustered Lance until Keith’s bedroom door was closed and then he had all kinds of things to say about Keith’s handsome brother. Keith hadn’t bothered to correct him, until Shiro got home to plant one on his husband, and Keith had to actually introduce them as the gross married people they were.

It let him to the memory of another time Lance had come to the apartment. Almost six months ago, now. Shiro was still at the hospital, still holding on, or at least still coming to terms with—well, with Adam looking half-alive but being gone in all the ways that mattered. Keith hadn’t been able to stay there longer than an hour, weeping at Adam’s bedside—he’d return when Shiro signed the paperwork in the morning. He’d called Lance and given him the verdict, and Lance had met him at home.

They’d watched foreign films because Keith wanted to read the subtitles so his mind couldn’t wander without missing something. He didn’t want to think about it, and Lance had let him not think about it. He had made him macaroni and cheese and pancakes because they had both in the cabinet and Keith couldn’t decide which he’d wanted. And then, Lance had stood awkwardly behind his chair and held Keith while he cried into the pancakes, because he’d realized that Adam would not make his from-scratch pancakes ever again—not next Saturday morning, and not any Saturday morning to follow.

The microwave went off, reminding Keith of the present. Where Lance was still here, taking care of Keith. He wondered if they’d ever break out of this cycle of Lance taking care of him. He thought he’d like to take care of Lance, someday.

“Hey,” Lance said, carrying the steaming bowl and a glass with a straw into the living room, handing the food off to Keith and holding onto the cup. His face must have shown where his thoughts had been, or Lance was just exceptional at reading him, because he asked, “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” said Keith. “I was remembering the first time you came here. And then I was remembering when you came here the day Adam…well, the day it happened. He technically died the next day. But you know that.” 

Lance knew that. He’d been the one to drive Keith back to the hospital, had been there in the room with them, and had driven them both home when it was over.

Lance nodded in understanding, his eyes sad like he was remembering it himself as he sat on the coffee table cross-legged, setting the cup beside him. Keith wished distantly that there was an end on his side of the couch, but he wouldn’t be able to reach it anyway. 

“It’s kind of like. Like you belong here,” said Keith. Lance lifted his head a little, his eyes settling on Keith with an uncomfortable weight. “I mean you’re comfortable here, in my space, digging in my closet and my fridge—”

“Oh, uh, sorry.”

“No,” said Keith. “No. Don’t be. I love…I love that you’re here. I love that you belong in my space.”

Lance smiled, and Keith felt something give. Not in a concerning way, like a stitch pulling loose, but something deeper. It felt a little like pent up anger or frustration, but lighter, and at the same time it was like the subsequent release when he hit something to dispel it; the simultaneous feeling of _too much_ inside him and what it felt like to just _let it out_.

“Can I ask you something?” said Keith.

Keith thought then about the near misses they’d already had—in the hospital after his surgery, probably that night when Keith was a disaster, and probably earlier today when Keith saw that text to Allura and almost said more than he should’ve. He thought about what he was going to ask, and if he was ready to ask it, and he _wasn’t ready_.

But he was asking.

“Yeah,” said Lance, patting Keith’s ankle in a way that was meant to be reassuring, but actually ramped up Keith’s nerves. Any point of contact with Lance felt like a lot right now, now that he was about to metaphorically lay everything bare. “What is it?”

“Are we…” Keith stopped, grunted at himself, frustrated. He picked up the fork that Lance had placed in the bowl and stabbed at the lasagna. “Um.”

“Take your time, I guess.”

“It. Um. Has recently come to my attention that we’ve been spending a lot of time together, just you and me,” said Keith. He was careful with his words, so he properly enunciated them, but he was also pulling all of this from nowhere. He was doing everything but asking the question, now, even though he’d committed to it already. “And whether it was intended this way or not, it seems like—”

“Oh,” said Lance, taking his hand off of Keith’s leg. “Oh, shit.”

 _Oh, shit_.

“What? I’m not even finished,” said Keith, testily.

“It seems like we’re _dating_ ,” said Lance. He pulled at the wrinkles in the fabric of his jeans – a nervous stim. “That’s what you’re getting at, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, okay. You got me. Can I fucking finish?” Keith asked. “Because I’m trying to ask you if you want that. I’m trying to ask you if we should stop _seeming_ like we’re fucking dating and actually date, because I want to date you. And you can say no, and you can forget I brought it up, and—”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“You are so dumb,” said Lance. “Yes. Obviously yes.”

Lance got off the table and moved in on Keith, kneeling beside him on the couch and cupping the sides of Keith’s face. He laughed shakily, and Keith laughed too. In the giddy rush that filled him, Keith started talking again. Lance laughed through it.

“I didn’t even know. I didn’t even read it that way. I just love you, and I was just spending time with you and loving you, and. And I just wasn’t picking up on any of the signs because you’re just so good, and I thought you were being good to me. I thought you were just my best friend.”

“Oh, baby,” said Lance. “I wanna make one thing especially clear to you right now. I am still your best friend.”

“Yeah,” said Keith. “I know.”

And then Lance was repeatedly kissing the side of Keith’s face, and Keith was laughing again and touching Lance’s waist, because that’s all he could reach.

“Lance, I have a lap full of lasagna.”

Lance looked down, took the bowl away and stretched out to set it on the table without moving from where he knelt at Keith’s side. The length of his arms and torso – astounding. His flexibility – astounding. Keith was enamored with his body.

“You’re so hot,” said Keith.

“What a time to get together,” said Lance, sitting up again and returning to his quest to kiss everywhere but Keith’s mouth, shifting from his face down to where his jaw met his neck. “When I can’t haul you off to the bedroom and have my way with you.”

“You can just deflower me another time.” Keith tried to turn his head to catch Lance’s mouth, but he dodged it and moved back to Keith’s face.

“Deflower? Babe, I’ve already heard all about your conquests,” said Lance, nuzzling Keith’s cheek. “Can I call you baby? Is that alright? I can pick something else, something more—”

“You can call me whatever you want, just fucking kiss me already, you ass,” Keith demanded.

Lance laughed, giving into Keith’s grumbling and finally, _finally_ kissing him. Soft, closed lips, a kiss that simultaneously felt like the momentous thing it was and like something they’d been doing every day. It was the kind of kiss that said _good morning_ , or _I’ll see you tomorrow_ , or _I love you_. It said _hello, I’m here_ , and _I’ve been waiting_.

The next few said it louder, and then said a little bit more when Keith leaned into it further, opened his mouth under Lance’s. Breathed him in.

And then Keith’s stomach growled, throwing the mood off course and making Lance draw away and toss his head back as he laughed.

“Don’t make fun of me,” said Keith. “I’m wasting away.”

“I tried to feed you,” said Lance, “You wanted to kiss instead.”

Keith waggled his fingers, making grabby hands at the bowl Lance had set aside. With a dramatic roll of his eyes, Lance swept it up and deposited it back in Keith’s lap.

“Try your best not to get any on the bandages,” said Lance. “I _will_ put a bib on you.”

“Fuck you,” said Keith.

“We’ve been over this,” Lance replied. “Another time.”

Lance sat back on the table. Keith guessed it was to put some space between them and give Keith room to eat. Keith dug into the lasagna, and it was slow going, and Lance hadn’t put the movie back on so it was just quiet with Lance watching him.

“Was, uh,” Lance started a few minutes after the onset of the awkward silence. “So we established that we were kind of dating before but not really, and obviously we should’ve had this talk way sooner, but.” He shrugged. “I didn’t want to rush you.”

“Rush me?”

“Yeah,” said Lance. “I thought maybe, when you asked me to the Puppy Prom…” The stupid work thing, where Keith had dressed up – by his standards –and picked Lance up and stuck to his side while they waded through dog-parents and sponsors all night. “I wanted it to be a date. I thought maybe it was, but you kept saying plus-one and treating it like a chore and. I still had fun! Loads of fun. I don’t want you to think—”

“I know,” said Keith.

Keith had been so careful not to suggest it was a date, because Lance had recently broken up with someone—they hadn’t been serious and Keith had never met her, but still, he wasn’t sure if Lance had finished licking his wounds. That, and for all their casual intimacies and playful flirtations, Keith wasn’t convinced that Lance actually wanted anything more.

“I think I kind of wanted it to be a date, too,” said Keith. “I just didn’t think you wanted…well I didn’t think you wanted anything, since you’d just gotten out of a thing.”

“What thing?” asked Lance, looking genuinely confused.

“The girl from your class.”

“Oh,” said Lance, picking at his jeans again. “Steph. I really only went out with her a couple of times, dude. It was mostly weird, and, well, I pulled away when Adam died because there was no way she would get it, and I wanted to be around for you, and…yeah. She was cool about it. But it was definitely long over by the time you asked me to your work party.”

“Oh,” said Keith. “So we’re dumb.”

“Yes, we’re dumb,” said Lance. “Though, to be fair, we’ve been a little preoccupied the last few months.”

“I guess.”

“Though if I’d kissed you the first time I had the thought we’d have had like three years, now, so—”

Keith prematurely swallowed his bite of lasagna and interrupted Lance with a round of coughing and sputtering. It was over as soon as it had happened, and because he’d mostly chewed it already most of it went down fine; it was the shock that got him. Still, Lance had gotten up and knelt back on the couch, a hand on Keith’s back and his nurse’s training clearly at the forefront of his mind.

“I’m fine,” said Keith. “I’m fine.”

“Scared the shit out of me,” Lance said, deflating a little against the couch, still rubbing Keith’s back –idly, now, gently. “You’re sure?”

“Just swallowed too soon, doesn’t matter,” Keith said, waving away the whole thing. He wanted to go back to what Lance had said, the very thing that had thrown him and had him choking on his dinner in the first place. “What do you mean _three years_?”

This was fucking news to Keith.

“Knew I couldn’t sneak that past ya,” Lance muttered, bowing his head to press a kiss to Keith’s shoulder, against his shirt. He pressed his forehead there a moment before lifting his eyes to Keith’s again. “It wasn’t like a full blown thing. I fall for everyone a little.”

“Mhmm.”

“Do you really want to know?” Lance asked.

Keith nodded. “Yeah.”

“Okay…well. Um. The first night back after Christmas break, you came by our room and Hunk fell asleep, but we just…stayed up talking. And you asked me about, um, my history with Allura and I told you all of it, cried a little and everything, and then I got to the end and you just said it was dumb. Like I bore my heart to you about how sad I was that we fell out of love and you just thought the whole thing was dumb?” Lance was smiling at Keith, like Keith hadn’t put his foot in his mouth three years ago and then forgotten about it. Keith stared at him, with no idea where this was going, and Lance just smiled at him more and lifted a hand to play with his hair. He continued: “But then you said— and I honestly can’t believe I didn’t lay one on you when you said this—you said that _she_ should’ve tried harder to keep _me_.”

“And that made you want to kiss me?” Keith asked, bewildered.

“Yeah,” said Lance. “Because you thought I was the one worth keeping.”

Keith reached as far as he could and tugged lightly on the fabric of his own hoodie, hinting that Lance should move in closer—he complied, and Keith caught his lips in a kiss. It was broken when Lance smiled too widely for it, and he pulled away to laugh and, apparently, finish the story.

“The urge was gone the next day when you complained about me singing in the shower and made fun of my shampoo, and I found out that you were using fuckin three-in-one.”

Keith groaned and nosed at Lance’s face, partly in annoyance and partly to hint that he wanted another kiss.

“It came back sometimes. The thought,” said Lance. “That _what if_. Smaller at first, when you said something crazy flattering or after we’d fought and I’d missed you like crazy, and then it started to take less. You’d just be _you_ , and I’d think about how I loved you, and I’d wonder if we could. By this summer…well, last summer, I guess…it was more and more and I kind of started to think we _should_.”

“Oh my God,” said Keith. “Why in hell would you go three years without fucking saying something? Why did you set me up with fucking _Rolo_ , when clearly you’ve had feelings for me the whole time?”

“Slowly growing feelings. A little bit at a time,”

Keith could kind of understand that, having slowly fallen more and more for Lance over time himself, but he’d reached a point of no return when he went out with Rolo. He’d liked the guy enough, but all he talked about was cocktails and the new _Star Trek_ incarnation while he slurped up fettucine; Keith liked him more when he was doing other things with his mouth, and by then he’d already realized he wished he was with Lance instead. It was only a few steps from there to realize that he wished he was with Lance in more ways than one, and to end the ill-fated date with an admission that he had feelings for someone else.

Admitting it to himself and to Rolo at the same time.

He told Lance as much, now in the living room with his bowl of Hunk’s lasagna in his lap, and Lance awarded him with a kiss.

“I should’ve just gone to you that night, honestly,” said Keith. “And said fuck it.”

“Well,” Lance said. “Doesn’t matter now. And we can just kiss a lot to make up for it.”

“Yeah?” said Keith. “Care to put your money where your mouth is?”

“More like put my mouth where your mouth is.”

“Yeah,” said Keith. “That.”

And Lance did.

****

Lance couldn’t sleep. He hadn’t really tried, instead leaving the TV on and letting it softly play _Grey’s Anatomy_ in the background while he basked in the blue glow of his phone screen, scrolling mindlessly through social media. He went to Keith’s sparse Instagram page more than once; most of Keith’s posts were landscape photos he took on runs or pictures of dogs from the obedience school, but Lance spent a lot of time looking anyway.

He hadn’t posted about his surgery yet; his last photo was a picture of him with a dog that had graduated from his class, where Keith smiled proudly at the camera. Before that was an orange-creamsicle sunrise. And before that, a candid of Lance sitting on a swing at the park down the street from his parents’ house, looking off at something else, the background a layer of drab, dirty snow; the caption said “man child” but it didn’t match the picture, not really. What Keith _said_ was just a distraction from the thousand words the picture was actually worth—Keith posted pictures of beautiful things, things that made him happy, and this was a picture of Lance in a completely ordinary moment, captured like it was beautiful.

The post was dated February 14th.

He felt like an idiot for missing that. For missing all of the things.

Lance groaned and pressed his face into his arm, into the sleeve of the sweatshirt he’d stolen from Keith’s closet. He’d picked something Keith couldn’t wear right now, since he was stuck in front-closures for a while, but Keith had noticed the moment he woke up from his evening nap and it must have had something to do with the conversation they’d tumbled into.

Lance was glad they’d talked. He was fucking over-the-moon about it. But he also had a hard time believing it, especially now that it was late, and Keith had gone off to bed where Lance couldn’t just kiss him to remind himself it was real. 

He wondered if some part of him wouldn’t let him sleep because he feared waking up to find he’d dreamt it all, and like any dream, the memory of it would slip away faster than memories of real life. He didn’t want to forget the way Keith’s lips felt – a little chapped, but so earnest and tender; he had tasted like morning breath at first and then lasagna, but that was alright because everything else about it was like coming home, seeing an old friend, tightening a knot that was loose, closing a loop. Putting things right.

Lance looked at his phone again. It was three in the morning. Netflix was asking if he was still watching.

Shuffling in the hallway had Lance sitting up, peering into the darkness to make out the outline of Keith in the dark.

“Oh,” said Keith. “You’re awake.”

“Yeah. Need something?”

“Thirsty,” he said. He lifted his arm just a little, holding up the cup in his hand. “I can do it. You don’t have to get up.”

Lance was getting up anyway. It wasn’t like he’d been sleeping.

Keith frowned at him and continued his trek to the kitchen, stopping at the fridge to fill his cup first with loud, tumbling ice and then with water. Lance leaned on his arms against the peninsula and waited until the ice machine stopped rumbling to talk.

“Are you sleeping okay?” he asked.

Keith grunted. “Was. Then I woke up feeling like I ate the desert.”

“Which desert?”

Keith looked over his shoulder to glare at Lance. Lance dropped his head a little, ruffling his own hair. He kinda lived for teasing Keith when he was grumpy, but he wouldn’t push him – it was too early in the morning to give him too much shit. Instead, he lifted his gaze back up to Keith as he finished filling his big cup and awarded him with the most awed look that Lance could muster. He felt it seeping out of his pores.

“Hey,” said Lance. “I can’t sleep.”

“Uh, that sucks?” said Keith, turning towards Lance with his cup in hand. Waiting for more information before he trudged back to his room. He was all disheveled and bleary-eyed, squinting to see Lance without his glasses, and Lance was in love with the sight.

“Yeah,” Lance said, still smiling, still confusing the hell out of Keith. “I keep thinkin’ about you.”

“Oh,” said Keith. “That’s…”

“Yeah.”

Lance pushed up off the countertop and closed the small distance between himself and Keith, holding out his hand and sliding it into Keith’s hair, delighting in the soft fuzz of his undercut and the strands that had fallen out of his ponytail. Lance had put it up for him earlier, because Keith had complained about having it down, but it hadn’t stayed put as he slept. Lance moved to fix this now, his fingers nimble and practiced, and when he was finished, he kissed the side of Keith’s head.

Keith hummed in contentment and leaned into the touch.

“I’ll let you go back to sleep, now,” said Lance, drawing away. Keith frowned, giving him pause. “What?”

“Uuuuuugh I love you,” said Keith, pouting the whole time. Lance laughed and reached for Keith’s chin, and with a gentle touch, turned Keith’s face so he could plant another soft kiss on his lips. Keith sighed into it, but grumped again when Lance stopped. “Lance.”

“What?”

“Want you to stay. I miss you,” said Keith, his free hand tangling in Lance’s hoodie and holding tight as he tipped his head forward onto Lance’s shoulder.

“I’ve been on the couch the whole time,” said Lance with a laugh, soaked in something like disbelief. “What, do you want me to sleep in your room?”

“Yeah,” Keith mumbled. He burrowed deeper and said something else, but Lance couldn’t make it out.

“Speak up, sweetheart,” said Lance. He idly wove Keith’s ponytail between his fingers, but gently enough that it slipped free when Keith lifted his head again.

He looked at Lance, frowning almost like he was angry, but Lance knew the furrow in his brow intimately; this was the expression Keith reserved for those moments when equally strong impulses went to war – the urge to give it up and be vulnerable, or to keep his hand close to his chest. Lance used to think he was just really private, that he _never_ wanted to share, but really Keith felt just as compelled to spill like the overflowing bottle he was as he did to maintain sullen silence. It was just about what part of himself he let win.

“Keep thinking you’re gonna leave,” said Keith, looking like he’d eaten something sour. “It’s fucking dumb.”

“Why would I leave?”

“Said it was dumb, didn’t I?” Keith shrugged, and then frowned more. “It’s not like I actually expect that you would. I just can’t wrap my head around…this.”

“I’ve slept over before,” Lance teased. He regretted the way he said it when Keith didn’t smile, when he just looked sadder. Lance “I know, though. I know it’s different.”

“Lance,” said Keith, soft and trembling. “I—”

Lance was already swooping in again, hovering at Keith’s side and touching him only gently and only in the places that wouldn’t push or pull at his chest, and he was kissing Keith’s cheek when he tasted the salt of tears, could hear and feel shaky breath against the side of his own face.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry I joked about it, I’m right here—”

“I’m sorry,” Keith said, his words tumbling over Lance’s. “I’m sorry.”

“No, no,” Lance said. “No, don’t be sorry.”

“Please don’t leave me,” Keith pleaded. “Please.”

“I won’t,” said Lance. He remembered the hospital the other day when Keith had cried with relief because Lance said he wouldn’t leave, but it hadn’t just been resolved there. It was bigger than that. Lance knew it was far, far bigger than that.

“What if we break up? What if—”

“We won’t.”

“You can’t promise that, Lance. You can’t…if you leave, everyone else will go with you. They were your friends first, and…”

“No,” said Lance. “They love you, too. Keith, they love you. And I won’t leave you. Even if…even if we don’t stay together, I won’t leave you.”

“But—”

“No,” Lance said, firmly this time. 

“Everyone leaves me!” Keith half-shouted, but in a devastating, broken kind of way. “I don’t know why, Lance. I don’t know why.”

Lance knew this story. He knew it well. Keith’s mother was absent for most of his early years, in and out of his life until the day she went undercover, broke up a crime syndicate, and subsequently disappeared into witness protection without Keith or his father. And because she wasn’t supposed to exist anymore, there was no finding her when Keith’s father died. He’d been bounced around foster homes from nine to fifteen; he ran away the day he tried to come out to his longtime foster parents, and stole their neighbors’ car. Shiro’s car.

The process of Shiro getting custody of Keith was another long story, but when Keith was seventeen it finally came through, and he had stability and support and testosterone and eventually a scholarship. He’d dropped out of college sophomore year, but he found a good job. His mom had made contact last spring and they started a tenuous relationship—Lance hadn’t met her and didn’t trust her, but Keith seemed happy.

Then Adam died. Adam died, and Keith never said it, but Lance knew he felt abandoned again. Not on purpose. Keith’s father hadn’t really meant to die either, but his job was running into burning buildings, and then one day he didn’t make it out. He hadn’t really meant to leave Keith, just like Adam would never have left Keith intentionally. But it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter _why_ someone Keith loved was gone again, only that it had happened _again_.

Lance hated that he couldn’t really promise that it wouldn’t keep happening. That he couldn’t freeze time or stop death. Lance thought sometimes about the perilous position everyone lived in, knowing that they would die, and worse, knowing that everyone they loved would die, too. He could live with that, because he had to. But seeing the way it broke Keith’s heart made him wish for a moment that he could take arms against the way of the world.

“Hey,” said Lance. “I’m going to be real with you. Shit changes. People leave. People die.”

“Thanks,” said Keith bitterly, sniffling. His nose was running and he couldn’t wipe it with one hand occupied by his water cup and one hand half in the pocket of Lance’s sweatshirt. So, Lance wiped it with his sleeve and Keith grimaced, jerking his head away. “Gross.”

“I can’t do anything to change what’s happened to you,” Lance continued, “but…”

“Lance,” Keith groused. “You’re really not making me feel better.”

“Would you let me finish? Damn.”

Keith winced, closed his eyes and looked away from him, but Lance could still see—in closing his eye, he’d squeezed out more tears and they rolled down his face and over the faint scar on his cheek. Lance used the backs of his fingers to wipe the tears. This time, Keith let him.

“I’m sorry,” Keith whispered.

“I should get to the point faster, baby, _I’m_ sorry,” said Lance. “I just wanted to…to acknowledge that it hurts and that there’s not much I can do to fix it. You can just let it hurt, and I’ll listen, and I’ll do what I can to reassure you that I’m all in. Like. You feel like there is a pattern, like the shit hand you’ve been dealt is your fault, but it isn’t. There is nothing – and I mean that, _absolutely nothing_ –about you that makes you just inherently easier to leave.”

“I’m so angry all the time,” said Keith. He stared at his feet, now. “I get angry and I take it out on people and…I’m such a fuckup…”

“Dude. You make bank and you get to see dogs all day.”

Keith shrugged.

“No, really. School wasn’t your thing. You worked hard, you got there, and you tried it out, but it wasn’t your thing,” said Lance. “Then you moved on and found something better for you. That’s not fucking up. And don’t act like I didn’t know you have a little bit of a temper. I used to get my kicks pushing your buttons. But Keith. Baby. Sweetheart. You’re working on it.”

“Yeah,” Keith admitted.

“Can you look at me?”

“Yeah,” said Keith, but it took him another moment to lift his head and meet Lance’s eyes.

“I’m not interested in being part of this pattern, okay? I don’t want to be like the idiots who left you, because they were wrong and they were stupid. I’m in love with you. I love you,” said Lance. “I know you. I don’t expect you to be perfect, because I already know you’re not, okay? I just expect you to treat me right. Are you gonna treat me right?”

“ _Yes_ ,” said Keith, like the alternative was ridiculous. And maybe it was.

Lance cupped Keith’s face in his hands. “That sounds like a great deal, don’t you think?”

Keith nodded and squeezed his eyes shut again, clearing what Lance hoped would be the last of the wetness in his eyes. Lance caught the tears with his thumbs and wiped them away. He leaned in, nudging Keith’s nose with his own and letting Keith take a few more shaky breaths to compose himself before he closed the rest of the distance between their lips. Keith kissed him back, melting into it.

He whined when Lance drew back.

“Are you ready to go back to bed?” asked Lance.

Keith let Lance go, but he hovered as Lance collected his pillow and phone charger, and together they trudged back to Keith’s room. They dug out Keith’s sleeping bag, and because Lance was picky he went looking in the hall closet for Shiro’s, too, and spread them out on the floor. Keith let him borrow a blanket from his bed, and Lance delighted in how it smelled like him when he buried his face in it.

Once everything was set up, Lance asked, “Anything else?”

“No,” said Keith into the dark room, not looking at Lance. “I’m—”

“Don’t apologize,” said Lance. “Please. I know you didn’t mean to snap at me. I know that you’re like. Embarrassed or whatever. But I don’t mind.”

“I love you,” said Keith.

“I love you, too,” Lance replied. “Goodnight?”

“Yeah,” said Keith. “Goodnight.”

****

Keith woke up to a warm, sunlit bedroom and the faint sound of a phone playing videos on low volume. He carefully picked up his glasses and put them on, so he could look over and see that Lance was still in his nest on the floor, lying with his back to Keith. He was watching something on his phone, clearly awake; he’d discarded the hoodie he had borrowed and kicked the blanket down to cover his legs. At some point between when Keith had first gone to bed and the incident in the kitchen, Lance had put on a pair of light sleep shorts—the blanket covered his bare legs, but Lance’s shirt had ridden up and Keith could see a warm swath of Lance’s back, the waistband of his boxer-briefs.

Keith wanted to crawl into bed with him and touch the dip of his lower back, the pattern of moles there that was not quite a constellation but certainly a beautiful little star cluster. He wanted Lance to be up here, in the real bed with him, snuggled into his side. How inconvenient for all this wanting to come unbridled right now, when he was over the threshold of confessing to Lance but could not crawl to him or curl around him or press against him in all the ways he’d been longing for.

Plus, the pain was nagging at him again, and he felt drained, and he was pretty sure as soon as Lance knew he was awake he’d go into nurse mode, and not boyfriend mode. Despite this, the thought of Lance being his boyfriend now made him incredulously happy.

“No headphones?” Keith asked, his voice croaky but in a nice, deep, affirming way.

Lance put his phone down and rolled over to face Keith, smiling. “They’re in my bag. Sorry, did I wake you?”

“No,” said Keith. “Why didn’t you get them?”

Lance chewed on his lip. He knew why, but he wasn’t telling, clearly.

“It would’ve taken you like a minute,” said Keith. “I wasn’t going to wake up and start tearing my hair out if you were gone for one minute.”

“I just didn’t want you to worry.”

Keith supposed Lance had every reason to think Keith would worry, after he’d cried to Lance about being abandoned over and over again. And pleaded with Lance not to leave him, too.

Keith groaned. He flopped his head back and stared at the ceiling. Lance was quiet, patient.

“That was embarrassing,” said Keith. “But I guess the part of me that’s afraid came out. Whatever.”

“That’s okay. Being a little afraid is okay. I’m afraid, too,” said Lance. “I didn’t say anything for a long time because I was afraid of changing things.”

“But it’s not okay for you to feel like you can never leave my side, Lance,” said Keith. “I don’t want that. I don’t want you to feel like you have to do that.”

“I don’t,” said Lance. Keith scoffed, because the fact that he felt like he couldn’t get his own damn headphones indicated that he did feel compelled to stick to Keith like glue. “Really, I don’t. _Today_ I feel like I wanna be close to you, because you had a rough night and this is what I know how to do to reassure you. In general, I will definitely leave you alone sometimes.”

Keith looked over to see that Lance was sitting up now, his knees drawn up and his arms folded over them. At first glance he looked so at ease, so comfortable with being here, saying the things he was saying, but there was a tension in him too—a little in his hands, wrung together, a little in the corner of his mouth.

“I’m sorry I waited,” said Keith. “I’m sorry that these first few days are going to be the worst. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.”

Lance shook his head. “No, don’t worry about it.”

“Lance…”

“I’m happy, okay?” said Lance. “I’m happy with how we got together. I don’t care that you also happen to be recovering from major surgery and it means you’re emotional and tired and that I can’t…we can’t...whatever. I don’t care. I wouldn’t change a thing.”

“But you’re afraid.”

“Yeah,” said Lance. “I’m afraid of the same things you are. I’m afraid I’ll push your buttons too much and piss you off and you’ll decide you’ve had enough of me. I’m afraid you’ll stop letting me in, and I won’t know what to do for you anymore. I’m afraid…I don’t know, I’m irrationally afraid the sex will be bad and you’ll hate sleeping with me. I don’t know, dude. But you’re not alone in this.”

“I don’t want you to be afraid of me,” said Keith.

“I’m _not_ ,” said Lance. He rose up to his knees and waddled over on them so that he was right at Keith’s bedside. He reached for his hand, and Keith took it and held on. “I’m not afraid of you. I’m afraid of…well, of things going wrong, I guess. But that’s not a reason not to do it.”

“Oh,” said Keith. “I never meant…”

“You never meant you wanted us to stop before we really started? Yeah, I hoped the fuck not,” said Lance. He laid his head down on Keith’s thigh, and Keith’s free hand could just reach his hair—“Keith, my hair is dirty.”

“So’s mine, and you keep touching it,” said Keith, playing with the little cowlick at the top of Lance’s head—it was less noticeable on the days Lance wore his hair curly-wavy like it was supposed to be, but it always popped up when the texture deflated or he brushed it out or straightened it.

“Touché.”

“So,” said Keith. “You’re worried the sex will be bad?”

“Shut up,” said Lance. “I said that in confidence.”

“No, I wanna talk about it,” Keith teased. “You afraid you can’t take my dick?”

Lance sputtered against Keith’s leg, half laughing and half dying of shock.

“That’s not what I meant. Wait, do you have a _strap_?” Lance asked, color flooding his face. Someday, Keith would get him to lie in his lap again so he could lean over and kiss right where Lance was turning pink – the bridge of his nose, his cheeks, the tops of his ears. “Baby, if you don’t, _can we get one_?”

Keith laughed at him. Lance hid his face.

“Don’t worry,” said Keith. “I have one.”

“Stop it. Stop. Are you serious?” Lance looked up, and he was even redder now. Keith assumed that his own face was just as flushed, but still, flustered Lance was hilarious. “God fuckin damn, Keith. You’re killing me.”

Keith laughed at him more, and then patted his cheek lovingly. Lance rose to his feet to lean over Keith, kissing him and babbling about all the things they could do together someday, until Keith was pushing him off, saying, “Enough. Make me some Pop Tarts.”

Lance was positively giddy as he complied. He came back with a plate of four warmed Pop Tarts and Keith’s pills, and then promptly fucked off again, returning this time with the supplies to empty Keith’s drains. Keith let himself be fussed over and nursed for the time it took to empty out the bulbs and record the fluid amounts, and then he shooed Lance off of him so he could eat.

Now that it wouldn’t be a barrier to Keith’s sleep, Lance rounded the bed and deposited himself upon it, unwinding his long limbs on Keith’s mattress and mussed covers and right into his space. Keith offered him a Pop Tart.

“Your breakfast? I couldn’t,” said Lance.

“I don’t want four,” Keith insisted.

In the end, Lance ate the Pop Tart and half of another. Keith was still hungry so Lance reheated the sandwiches his mother had made, but this time the way he was meant to—heating the meat and cheese through in one pan and grilling the bread on the other. While he waited, Keith took a quick trip to the bathroom to give himself a baby-wipe bath and struggle with the stupid spray deodorant that Shiro had bought him because he thought it would be easier than the stick. It was, but it made him sneeze.

Shortly after Keith returned to his place on the couch, Lance deposited a sandwich on his lap, dressed up with the rest of the sliced tomatoes.

As promised, they watched the original Star Wars trilogy. Lance sat close to Keith and touched his leg sometimes, or kept an arm on the back of the couch so he had easy access to Keith’s hair.

True to form, Lance fawned over Princess Leia and praised Carrie Fisher for, as he said it, “saying phenomenal, crazy shit.” Keith teased him for the pictures of eight-year-old Lance dressed up as Leia with his twin sister, who was also dressed as Leia; Rachel’s displeasure at Lance stealing her thunder was evident on her face, and it was the only thing that really distinguished them in the pictures. They’d looked so similar when they were little.

They mouthed along with the actors’ lines for the most iconic scenes, as always. At the beginning of _Empire_ when Yoda was introduced, Lance wrapped himself in a blanket and hit the end table with one of Keith’s reusable bendy straws, and Keith lost his shit.

“Yoda said be gay, do crimes,” Lance said as he clambered back up onto the couch. Keith shook his head at him, because it was ridiculous, but when he leaned in for a kiss Keith gladly gave him what he wanted.

Lance seemed to get progressively more hyper throughout the film, and Keith figured out why when he stilled as Han and Leia said goodbye before Han’s carbonite bath; as they kissed, Lance turned to Keith and kissed his shoulder, making sheepish eye contact. When the onscreen kiss was broken, instead of just mouthing the words like he usually would, Lance spoke them aloud— Leia’s “ _I love you_ ” turned warm in Lance’s mouth.

Lance wanted to recreate the iconic scene because they’d watched it together so many times, maybe a little because he’d craved a dramatic confession like that for so long. Keith had, too. But the way Lance sounded when he actually said it was not charged with longing or theatricality; it was just truth. A soft, reliable truth.

And Keith said, “I know.”


End file.
